Interesting - but do you think an alt tag in an active graphic link be optimised for the link only - or will the alt tag keywords also be used for assessing the keywords of a particular page, as anchor text can be?
I saw your post on the issue of Kawasaki Motorbikes the other day, so I changed the nav menus of the comparative-religion.com site so include keywords for
that particular page and that page only in the alt tags. I'm hoping that will at least be able to address the latter part of that question - will observe my traffic fgures and click throughs of search terms.
Another point, though - have you ever noticed any effect of using link titles as well? I'm also applying those, but using keywords in a way more suitable for human users. But it does mean you can find a lot of keywords in a particular link - for example:
[code:1:60834d8b4f]
<a href="keyword anchor text" title="keyword title text"><img src="" alt="keyword alt text""></a>
[/code:1:60834d8b4f]
That's 3 potential areas for keyword use - in a single link.
Btw - the links in my CR menu's are mainly text with a little arrow graphic, so I can employ all three methods at once. It would be interesting to see whether that's good use, or whether links should be alt tagged OR anchor text only - ie, one or the other.
I also use a graphic spacer between links, which provides an additional set of (non-link) alt tags for stuffing keywords - though whether these are counted by Google, Inktomi, etc, is another issue I have yet to resolve.
Anchor text still has power, though - the GoogleBombing with "miserable failure" is an example of how the practice can be applied.
Problem with it all, though, is the issue of LocalRank. That's the biggest threat to internal links. Nav menu structure may become an irrelevant issue - but hopefully not too soon.
Linear Mode
